Festive Thanksgiving Desserts
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
These Thanksgiving Desserts are festive and easy holiday dessert ideas, including pies, cookies and bars, cakes, loaves, sweet breads, and more!
And while pumpkin pie will always be on the dessert table, this easy Pumpkin Trifle is a festive dessert too!
Thanksgiving is about family, gratitude, togetherness, gathering, and, of course, the turkey. And one might argue it’s also about the sides.
And yet, the feast wouldn't be the same without traditional and nontraditional Thanksgiving dessert recipes. From pumpkin pie to the modern twist of pumpkin cheesecake or cheesecake bars appearing on holiday tables, the sky is the limit on creative and delicious dishes to add to your dessert offerings.
Best Pumpkin Pie Recipe
It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without a classic pumpkin pie. This is my favorite!
Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Easy Pumpkin Spice Trifle
This Pumpkin Trifle is a beautiful fall dessert featuring layers of pumpkin bread, pumpkin mascarpone cream, and whipped cream topped with gingersnaps and pecans. It's easy to make ahead, stunning on the table, and tastes like pumpkin pie in trifle form-rich, creamy, and irresistibly festive.
Pumpkin Trifle Recipe
Pecan Pie Recipe
Try this simple and delicious pecan pie recipe. With a rich caramel pecan filling and a buttery crust, it's perfect for the holidays.
Pecan Pie Recipe
Easy No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake
No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake is one of the easiest pumpkin desserts you'll ever make. Light and fluffy with distinctive pumpkin spice flavoring, it's an easy cheesecake you'll come back to time and again.
No Bake Pumpkin Cheesecake Recipe
Easy Sweet Potato Pie Recipe
This easy Sweet Potato Pie recipe has become a favorite sweet staple for fall and the holidays. Simple ingredients, amazingly delicious flavor, and evocative history of bringing family and community together.
Sweet Potato Pie Recipe
Easy Apple Slab Pie
This Apple Slab Pie recipe is a simple way to make an apple pie that feeds a crowd and is 100% delicious with warm spices of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Using ready-made crusts speeds up the process and delivers a fabulous pie everyone will love.
Apple Slab Pie Recipe
Hummingbird Cake
Hummingbird Cake is a moist and dense cake filled with ripe bananas, pineapple, pecans, and deliciously savory spices. Tweaked slightly from the original, this cake is simplified and made even easier in a Bundt pan. And, of course, drizzled in a thick cream cheese glaze for the ultimate in flavor.
Hummingbird Cake Recipe
Easy Apple Spice Bundt Cake Recipe for Fall Baking
Apple Spice Bundt Cake is one of the easiest, prettiest, most delicious apple spice cakes you can make. Made with fresh apples and warm fall spices, it's soft and tender with a stick to your fork moist crumb.
Apple Spice Bundt Cake Recipe
Pumpkin Bundt Cake
This Pumpkin Bundt Cake is tender and rich with the flavors of fall. An incredibly easy cake to make, beautiful to serve, and delicious with a velvety vanilla Cream Cheese Icing.
Pumpkin Bundt Cake Recipe
Simple Pecan Tassies
Tiny, bite-size Pecan Tassies are a delicious, chewy, and decadent pecan-filled pastry with a cookie-like crust. This southern-inspired treat is an all-time favorite, and incredibly simple to make for the holidays, or anytime you're craving pecan pie.
Pecan Tassies Recipe
Easy Caramel Pecan Pie Bars
Easy Caramel Pecan Pie Bars are a decadent treat, packed with maple and pecans, and so much easier than a pecan pie.
Caramel Pecan Pie Bars Recpe
Easy Brownie Pie
This homemade Brownie Pie recipe is a simple marriage of fudgy chocolate brownies and crispy, flaky pastry crust. And it's so incredibly delicious served warm, dusted with powdered sugar, and perhaps a dollop of melting vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
Brownie Pie Recipe
Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting
Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting is a classic fall dessert that's simple to make, soft, utterly delicious, and filled with warm spices. The velvety Cream Cheese Frosting makes these simple bars a standout favorite.
Pumpkin Bars Recipe
Chocolate Swirl Pumpkin Bread
Chocolate Swirl Pumpkin Bread is a decadently delicious fall treat that's rather incredibly yummy with the pumpkin spice flavors and rich chocolate swirled and marbled into the bread. Making it a pumpkin bread you won't soon forget.
Chocolate Swirl Pumpkin Bread Recipe
10 Minute No Bake Cheesecake
This No Bake Cheesecake is a 10-minute prep (plus chilling time), no-bake, foolproof way to make cheesecake, the easy way. And, it's utterly delicious. Utterly simple. And one you'll make often!
No Bake Cheesecake Recipe
Easy Cranberry Cream Cheese Danish
These easy Cranberry Cream Cheese Danishes will bring the holidays to your table! Twirls of flaky puff pastry are braided over layers of sweetened cream cheese and a delicious cranberry filling with hints of cinnamon and citrus. Every bite of this glazed braided danish is holiday-worthy!
Cranberry Cream Cheese Danish Recipe
Easy Carrot Cake Recipe with Cream Cheese Frosting
This Carrot Cake Recipe with cream cheese frosting is an easy, irresistible and mouthwatering cake to satisfy all your carrot cake cravings!
Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
Easy Pumpkin Bread Recipe
It's time to bake this favorite Pumpkin Bread recipe when the leaves begin their glorious transformation. Or even before, you will find me whipping up my all-time favorite pumpkin bread. It's like a rite of passage into an amazing season. This pumpkin bread is a liberally spiced, dense, cake-like bread we absolutely love.
Pumpkin Bread Recipe
Easy Carrot Cake Loaf
This Carrot Cake Loaf is packed with flavor and grated carrots. Warm spices make it incredibly delicious, topped generously with cream cheese frosting!
Carrot Cake Loaf Recipe
Orange Cranberry Bread
Holiday Orange and Cranberry Bread is a delicious and buttery bread filled with the flavors and scents of the season. A wonderful and easy to make bread for gatherings or even to gift.
Orange Cranberry Bread
Spiced Sugar Cookie Recipe
Spice Sugar Cookies are soft, buttery, shaped cookies deliciously infused with warm spices and perfect for the season. Whether you serve them for Thanksgiving or as a fall tea cookie.
Spiced Sugar Cookies Recipe
Carrot Cake Raisin Spice Cookies
Carrot Cake Raisin Spice Cookies are a delightful twist on classic carrot cake. These cookies are moist, flavorful, and packed with wholesome ingredients like grated carrots, raisins, and warm spices.
Carrot Cake Raisin Cookies Recipe
Giant and Soft Ginger-Spice Cookies
These Ginger Spice Cookies are a perfect fall cookie as and a delightful, delicious Christmas cookie too! Richly spiced, soft, and chewy, these ginger cookies also make a scrumptious treat all year.
Get the Recipe
Baked Maple Donuts with Pecans
These maple donuts, are a scrumptious cake-like baked donut with warm spices and topped with a thick maple glaze and crunchy chopped pecans.
Baked Maple Donuts Recipe
Easy Pumpkin Donuts
These easy pumpkin donuts are flavored with classic fall pumpkin spice and packed with pure pumpkin puree, which makes them moist, tender, and delicious! They're also made a wee bit healthier with Greek yogurt, which adds tenderness to this delicious cake donut.
Easy Pumpkin Donuts Recipe
Pumpkin Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Pumpkin Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies combines the best of chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin spice. All in one crispy-edged, gooey, chocolaty cookie.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Scones
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Scones are an incredible, tender, delicious fall scone perfect for breakfast or brunch, with coffee, or for tea. Simple to make in minutes, they are addictively yummy!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Easy Pumpkin Cookies with Vanilla Butter Icing
Pumpkin Spice Cookies with Vanilla Butter Icing are a vintage-inspired, melt-in-your-mouth, light, and airy cookie, so delicious it will become a fall tradition.
Pumpkin Cookies Recipe
Easy Apple Crisp Recipe Like Grandma Used to Make
An easy Apple Crisp recipe for days when you're craving comfort food like grandma used to make. A simple to make apple dessert served warm from the oven with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Easy Apple Crisp Recipe
Cranberry Cheesecake Recipe
This easy Cranberry Cheesecake recipe is the perfect dessert for the holidays with a creamy filling and a tangy topping.
Cranberry Cheesecake Recipe
Crock Pot Apple Crisp Recipe
Warm, cozy, and effortless - this Crock Pot Apple Crisp (Slow Cooker Apple Crisp) is a fall favorite with tender apples, cinnamon spice, and a buttery oat topping. Perfect for autumn gatherings or a weeknight dessert.
Crock Pot Apple Crisp Recpe
Cranberry Apple Galette Recipe
This cranberry apple galette is a lot like apple pie, but a whole lot easier! It's beautiful, impressive, effortless, and oh-so-delicious! Perfect for your holiday table or anytime you're craving pie, the easy way!
Easy Cranberry Apple Galette Recipe
Apple Hand Pies (Oven and Air Fryer) Recipe
Make easy homemade apple hand pies with a delicious cinnamon apple filling in the oven or air fryer. A scrumptious treat for any occasion.
Apple Hand Pies Recipe
Easy Baked Pears Recipe
Easy 4-ingredient baked pears with honey, cinnamon, and granola. A quick, naturally sweet fall dessert that's cozy, wholesome, and ready in 30 minutes.
Easy Baked Pears Recipe
Almond Frangipane Pear Tart Recipe
This French-inspired Pear Tart with Almond Frangipane is an elegant yet easy dessert. Made with ripe pears, a rich almond filling, and a simple tart shell, it's perfect for fall gatherings, Thanksgiving, or afternoon tea.
Pear Tart Recipe
Top 7 Most Popular Thanksgiving Desserts
If you’re like me, you may wonder what the most anticipated Thanksgiving desserts are. Here’s a rundown of some of the most popular Thanksgiving desserts, according to Cox Media Group. Some desserts are obvious favorites; others may surprise you as much as they did me!
- Pumpkin Pie: It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without it. Here’s my favorite pumpkin pie recipe.
- Sweet Potato Pie: A deliciously flavored pie, similar to pumpkin pie, but oh so uniquely delicious with a beautiful heritage too. Here’s my favorite sweet potato pie recipe.
- Pecan Pie: While nothing beats the whole pie, this Caramel Pecan Pie Bars recipe twist is easy and delicious, too.
- Apple Pie: 100% agree. It has to be on the dessert table. This Apple Slab Pie is easy to make and feeds a gathering.
- Hummingbird Cake: This classic Southern staple is a delicious addition to the table, flavored with pineapples and bananas, baked in a Bundt cake, and topped with cream cheese frosting and toasted pecans. See the classic Hummingbird Cake recipe!
- Pumpkin Cheesecake: For a nice modern twist on traditional pumpkin pie (I say make both). Here’s an easy 10-minute no bake cheesecake recipe.
- Carrot Cake: Like the Hummingbird Cake, this cake is filled with warm spices of the season. Make it easy in a loaf pan with this Carrot Cake recipe.
